Brisket with the Boys

Somehow Ann and Dyce are joined at the hip and are constantly texting back and forth. This time, unbeknownst to me, they schemed up a dinner Wednesday last week for which Rob would smoke a brisket and I would make a "sexy potato dish." Don't take this the wrong way. I'm always game for dinner and I hardly mind if Ann commits me for a dish.

As always, the guys went way overboard, making not only the brisket, but mini crab cakes for an appetizer, a wonderful salad with apples, spiced pecans, and a maple dressing, as well as an old-school apple cake for dessert.

Ann and I kicked in the sexy potatoes, a Savoyard cheese and potato casserole called tartiflette which I covered in a prior post, a bowl of herb mayo for the crabcakes, and a delightful magnum of Chianti Classico. All in all, we had a phenomenal meal that would be impossible to get at any local restaurant.

Out at a restaurant or at one of our homes, it's always such a pleasure to have dinner with Rob and Dyce. Not only do we have wonderful conversation, but when we do it at their house, we our dog fix playing with both of their pups. Having lost both our dogs in recent years, Ann and I are being a bit jealous of our freedom to go on a whim, to travel, and to not worry about finding pet care. But we both love dogs so much that we still need to get our dog time and that's what we get from Rob and Dyce's girls.

Smoked Brisket with Tartiflette

Lola Loves Ann

Crab Cakes with Herb Mayonnaise

Brisket Ho!

Slices of Brisket with Smoke Ring

It's a Party When You Crack a Magnum

What wine to pair with smoked brisket? It is beef and so it is going to want a red and a pretty big one at that. My palate runs to wines that are lighter bodied, higher acid, and less fruity. For me, major grape varietals that fit this profile are Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, and to a lesser extent Tempranillo. Because it's beef, I opted for a bigger more extracted Sangiovese, a Chianti Classico. Of all the Chianti sub-zones, Classico seems to me to be the best match with beef, but then a great Brunello would have been delightful as well.

Spiced Pecans

Delightful Salad

Rob's Apple Cake, More Savory Than Sweet

It looks like Rob and Dyce are headed to California for Thanksgiving and we won't be able to get together again until early December. I'm feeling dinner at our house and I'm looking for an excuse to make braciole, if I don't get overruled by the powers that be.

Donald's 50th

A few weeks back, Donald said that he and Terry were coming down from Seattle to celebrate Donald's 50th birthday and asked if we wanted to do a shellfish boil. Of course! We thought we were doing the do at our house and I would be cooking. But somewhere along the line, the boys rented a really nice apartment above the Methven tasting room in downtown Dundee and brought everything they needed for Terry to cook from Seattle.

We went out to dinner with them Tuesday night at Pura Vida in McMinnville and then they spent all Wednesday morning running around and all the way into Portland to buy the ingredients for dinner. We showed up at 5:30 as Donald was finishing up making the appetizers and Terry was working away on the shellfish.

The Donald

Terry Prepping the Small Lemons

Appetizers

We brought a bottle of Champagne and a nice Chardonnay to go with the lobster while Donald and Terry kicked in two local sparklers and a bottle of Pinot. Of course, they brought Riedel Champagne glasses with them from home!

One of Many Dead Soldiers

Always a Party When These Two are Together

Getting Suited Up for Battle

The Boys Never Forget Anything

Lobster, Clams, Potatoes, Sausage, and Corn

After the delicious feast that Terry prepared, we cut the cakes. Ann started baking a cake for Donald before she realized that he was making his own. We had way too much cake!

Pastry Chef Donald Made His Own Cake

Annie Made Donald a Cake Too

Donald's cake had marionberry jam and lemon curd between the layers and was frosted with buttercream. Ann's cake was lemon with blueberries and was frosted with lemon marionberry cream cheese frosting and topped with lemon rind and mint and Johnny Jump Ups (violas) from our garden. Both cakes were delicious.

I Can't Believe I Ate All This

Carter's Birthday

Sunday, Carter's Birthday, is one that we will probably never forget. His 15th birthday was a day that he chose to show his true teenage colors in front of friends and family. By way of extreme contrast, it was a beautiful day outside, our gardens are in full summer bloom, and we had great food and a good visit with Ann's parent's Mary and Bob.



A Rare Smile

Despite his being the rear end of a horse for 99% of Sunday, I actually caught Carter with a smile on his face.




Baba Ganoush

For an appetizer, Ann asked me to make baba ganoush from three small eggplants that we had in the cooler, so I did. I haven't made baba ganoush in so long that I had almost forgotten how simple and delicious it is!

Ann Assembling BLTs

When Ann asked Carter what he wanted to eat for his birthday, I don't think either of us were expecting the answer to be BLTs. Steak, perhaps, or pizza, more likely, but a BLT? Never! How good is a great BLT like the one below?

Glorious Eats!

Carter Asked for This Cake

And now, so that we can finish on a happy note, here are some photos from my stroll around the gardens on Sunday morning.

Echinacea

Volunteer Sunflowers

Volunteer Butterfly Bush

It's Finally Hibiscus Season

Bumblebees and Hummingbirds Love Anise Hyssop

Dinner Plate Sized (see how tiny the bumblebee looks?)

Arroz con Cosas

Donald Made a Diva Cake

The big 50!

We celebrated Ann's 50th with a lot of friends and family on Sunday and I was so wrapped up in having a good time that I forgot to shoot many pictures. I did get a picture of the awesome diva cake that Donald made for Ann, chocolate cake under the pink skirt and raspberry and white chocolate for the base.

For a fall day, it sure was unseasonably warm outside, especially when coupled with a roaring fire. Because of the 90-plus degree heat, Ann stayed inside in the air conditioning and so missed the making of the paella. So this post is for her and hopefully answers her question, "How did you make the paella?"

Speaking of paella, I may as well go ahead and call my concoction by the somewhat derogatory term arroz con cosas as a pre-emptive strike against those Valencians who insist that true paella can only be made in a single way. The paella snobs sniff almost sotto voce, "That's not paella, it's arroz con cosas (rice with things)." Sorry guys, this is my yard, my party, and my freaking paella. Thanks for the idea, but like The Chairman said, "I did it my way!"

Chicken Wings and Salvadoran Chorizos

This was my first attempt at making paella outdoors over a fire. Sure, I have made paellas aplenty in hotel pans at the restaurant, but there is something really awesome about heating up a really beautiful paellera over a wood fire. And this super-thick Pata Negra paellera from La Tienda in Williamsburg is a thing of beauty. I love this mild steel pan in the same way that I love our black steel sauté pans at the restaurant. It takes a lot of maintenance to keep it from rusting, but it is so responsive and a joy to cook in.

While it was my first attempt at paella over a fire, I am no stranger to cooking over a fire, having done it quite a lot in the days of my misspent youth. Armed with a big stack of dogwood and cherry wood from the field behind us, it took almost no time to get a nice blaze going, especially after the last couple of months without rain.

Then Onions, Red Peppers, and Hard Spanish Chorizo

Because the cooking action is so quick in making a paella, you need to have everything prepped in advance. In the days before the party, I made a couple gallons of pretty saffron-yellow stock from pork necks, pig's feet, chicken feet, vegetables, saffron, and mussels. I like to add the saffron to the stock to get even distribution in the rice. And after straining the stock, I salted it to taste. When cooking a paella, it is sometimes hard to get the right amount of salt: salting the stock helps with that. Not too much salt, mind you, because the stock does evaporate in cooking and will concentrate the salt.

I also diced red peppers, yellow onions, green onions, and a small hard chorizo on Saturday and had them waiting in containers, ready to go in the pan to make my sofrito. In the photo above, you see that I have moved the meat to the outside of the pan and am frying the sofrito in the center. Once the vegetables started to soften, I added two huge scoops of minced garlic and Italian parsley and let it cook with a couple tablespoons of pimentón before adding heated stock to the pan.

Stock is Boiling Gently; Rice Always in Sign of the Cross

How much stock, I'm not sure, though I started with a couple of gallons. You see in the photo above that I filled the pan to the bottom of the handle rivet. And the rice, now I know for sure that my 55cm (more than half a meter! that's a good-sized pan!) paella pan takes a kilo and a half of rice. Tony and I just eyeballed it and judged it just right at one-and-a-half kilo bricks of rice.

Once the rice was in the pan, everything was pretty much on autopilot and all I had to do was mind the flame and rotate the pan now and again to place a different part of the pan over the hot spot. There was no way to avoid a hot spot: a constant gusty breeze kept the leeward side of the pan much warmer than the windward, and that's nothing if not normal when cooking over a fire.

Almost Done! Listening to the Crackle of the Soccarat!

As the rice started to plump, I added artichoke hearts and soon the rice got thick enough to embed the mussels and to support the shrimp on top. At this point, it was just a matter of letting the soccarat—the coveted crisp rice crust that is the sure sign of a well-cooked paella—form on the bottom of the pan as the seafood finished steaming on top of the rice that was in the final stages of just becoming tender.

I started with a big fire when cooking the chicken and vegetables and then let it die down to a simmer while the rice cooked. At the end, I threw more wood to the fire to get it really hot again and spent the last few minutes listening carefully to the pan, listening for the stock to boil off and the soccarat to crackle. This pan rewarded us with the most amazing soccarat ever!

Dig in!

Happy Birthday, Annie! I hope you enjoyed it! And thank you Valencia for one of the greatest party foods ever! Even if it is just rice with things.

Third Annual Valentine's Dinner

It Doesn't Really, Does it?

For the third year running, we've had our Valentine's Dinner for friends on the Sunday before Valentine's Day so that we can celebrate. In the restaurant business, Valentine's Day and the days of intense preparation leading up to it constitute one of the busiest times of our year. And because I am always working, celebrating on Valentine's Day itself is never possible.

Last year, we did a more elaborate dinner with cocktails and appetizers and it was just too much for me on top of my insanely busy workload at the restaurant. I really like the simplicity of this year's menu and the fact that with some advanced planning, Ann and I putzed around in the kitchen for only about 90 minutes pulling everything together. And that wasn't 90 minutes of solid work either; we might have opened the Prosecco before the other guests arrived and had a little whistle-wetter while putzing about the kitchen.

Ann Always Sets a Beautiful Table

We Started with Virginia Sewansecott Oysters

Ann had wanted Wellfleet oysters to start off the dinner, but with the blizzard in New England, that wasn't happening. We "settled" for Sewansecotts from H. M. Terry over on the Eastern Shore opposite the mouth of the Rappahannock River. I love the briny flavor of Eastern Shore oysters, but the shells are so soft that they are a pain to shuck cleanly.

The First of Many Bottles

We opened a lot of bottles of wine with our dinner, our friends not lacking in thirst! For sparkling wines with our oysters, we had Prosecco, a Loire rosé, Roederer Champagne, and a couple of other bottles that I didn't really get a look at because I was busy shucking oysters. With dinner, we had a delicious Rioja that Dimitri brought along, a California Syrah and a Washington State Bordeaux blend from our cellar, and Mike and Dennis brought along two local wines: Jim Dolphin's Cab Franc and this Otium Dornfelder from nearby Loudoun County. I don't know Otium Cellars and Dornfelder is not a grape that I have tasted before and as much as I like to support our own Virginia wine industry, this was not a good wine. To quote Ann, "This tastes like ass!" Indeed. I'd be lying if I said anything flattering about this wine.

Mike Forgot his Camera; I Gave him Mine!

Dennis and Dimitri. Where is Mark? He Seems to be Camera Shy.

Dennis and the Girls

After the oysters, we had dinner proper: braised duck, truffled mac and cheese, braised turnips, and sautéed brussels sprouts. It worked out well (and created a lot fewer dishes) to have everyone serve himself from the cooking vessels arrayed on the counter in the kitchen, rather than to platter everything up and take it to the dining room. Thanks to Ann for coming up with the menu so that all I had to do was execute it. And it was fun working with her in the kitchen finishing it up. We make a good team in the kitchen!

Moulard Duck Legs Starting Their Three-Hour Braise

The Finished Product

The day before the party, I braised the duck legs with white wine, veal stock, parsley stems, and thyme. And twenty minutes before taking the duck off the heat, I added peeled and quartered turnips. I let everything chill out together in the rondeau overnight in the cooler. On Sunday, I reheated the congealed mass to the point where I could separate the liquids from the solid duck and turnips. The duck went onto a sheet tray to reheat in the oven at the same time as the mac and cheese was baking and the liquids went into the big blender, first to be defatted and then to be whirred into a smooth sauce that was further reduced on a tiny flame on the stove.

Orecchiette with Four Cheeses and Black Truffles

Next up was the truffled mac and cheese. Ann and I apparently have different ideas of what mac and cheese is. I make classic American (see Fannie Farmer) mac and cheese, slightly overcooked pasta bathed in Sauce Mornay and baked. What Ann describes is more like pasta mixed with straight cheese, something I've never seen before. Good no doubt, but I know it not. My Mornay contains a mixture of young Manchego, Goot Essa Alpenkäse, Carr Valley Marisa, and commercial mozzarella in roughly equal parts. And a good healthy dose of black truffles. I generally would use a hollow pasta such as cavatappi (corkscrews) but Ann seemed to want a more substantial pasta, so I used that Pugliese specialty, orecchiette (little ears). Needless to say, there were no leftovers.

Speaking of cheese, Goot Essa has no web site but if you chance upon some of John Esh's cheese, by all means, give it a try. John is a plain dairy farmer, some would say Amish, from Pennsylvania and he makes great cheese. He popped into the restaurant some years ago with samples and I have been hooked on his Alpenkäse every since.

Artful Shot of Shallots for the Brussels Sprouts

Sprouts, One of the Few Late Winter Green Vegetables

Turnips, Braised along with the Duck

Ann's Red Wine Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ann made this delicious not-too-sweet red wine chocolate cake for dessert. We passed a decanter of Warre's 1977 Port along with dessert.

Who Needs Plates?